


The Secret Library

by copperbadge



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Antique Pornography, F/M, Libraries, Library Sex, erotic novels, shenanigans on a library ladder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-10
Updated: 2005-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet is worried about combining their libraries; Peter's just worried about what she might find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret Library

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon.

The library of Peter Wimsey's Picadilly flat was lit oddly blue in the late afternoon; despite the roaring fire in the hearth, putting out furnace heat against the unseasonably cold weather, the windows let in the gloom of the rain and overcast outside. It cast deep shadows across the soft chairs, the buttery calfskin bindings of the books, the planes and edges of the piano and the sheaf of loose sheet music sitting on top of it. A thirteenth-century folio of minor poetry, a recent acquisition of Lord Peter's, lay open on the table. 

And, in one of the long, low couches near the fire, Harriet Vane was sleeping. 

To be fair, while being engaged to Peter wasn't entirely unpleasant, being the fiancee of Lord Peter Wimsey could be exhausting. Everyone requested an interview, a visit, a photograph; someone had pitched the horrific idea of reissuing all her novels with 'Lady Peter Wimsey' in place of 'Harriet Vane' on the cover. Fortunately, her editor and publisher had mutually veto'd the idea and she'd only heard about it afterwards. It was, she thought, an excellent metaphor for her anxiety about the marriage: if she was Lady Peter too much, would she still be able to be Harriet? 

For now, however, her involuntary ascent up the social ladder was not troubling her. With her head pillowed on one arm of the couch and her legs drawn up underneath her long wool skirt, she was sleeping soundly, a tattered paperback novel dangling precariously from her fingers. Peter's library, once the inner lair of an adversary, was now a place to find peace if she tired of her own flat, and she had come with plans to spend a quiet afternoon reading and talking with Peter, eat a good dinner in his company, and return home to work at the typewriter for an hour or two before bed. 

Instead the book was slowly, by degrees, inching its way out of her grasp as she slept, and Peter had left her to it, hieing himself off to get into mischief in some other corner of his home. 

The novel that hung by friction and the pressure of one or two fingers was old and tattered, the cover nearly coming off; a small block of pages near the back stood out from the rest with the sullen disorder of paper coming loose from its glue binding. It was full of dogears, and to add insult to injury, the spine was cracked. In the face of the calfskin and incunabulae, it was abhorrently shabby and maltreated. 

When it fell, finally, the loose pages in the back came entirely unglued and fluttered to the ground much more slowly than the rest of the book, which dropped with a muffled thump to the thick carpet. The unglued pages, including the back cover, splayed themselves across the surrounding area in disarry. Harriet, blissfully unaware of the mortal injury to her novel, merely adjusted her shoulders against the arm of the couch and slept on, her hand drifting up to lie across her stomach, fingers burrowing for warmth in the fold of a knit jumper. 

It was thus, with the fire beginning to burn low, the book disintegrated, and her hands rather abominably cold that Peter found her when he returned to see if she was awake and would like tea. He had been deep in conference with Bunter in the darkroom, getting in the way and asking difficult questions that he had no business burdening Bunter with, but Bunter bore it with the patience of an experienced valet and, beyond that, an army Sergeant. 

Bunter had been asked to give opinions on things other than the running of the household and Peter's clothing, and for once had not enjoyed it; the marriage, being between his employer and an intelligent if somewhat unknown quantity of a woman, was really not within his purview as a servant, he felt. Still, he was responsible for the domestic peace of the household, and Lord Peter had clearly required the opinion of someone with Bunter's unique understanding. 

He had advised honesty and forthrightness, which Lord Peter was in the habit of at any rate, and was unlikely to disagree with.

"It's going to be deuced uncomfortable, though," Peter had said thoughtfully. "Still, I don't imagine it will last more than three or four minutes either way. If she's shocked, she'll simply make her excuses and leave; if she's amused, she won't tease for too long. I know Harriet that well, at any rate, I should think and hope."

Bunter had murmured something in the affirmative, and emptied a pan of chemicals into the waste drum in the corner of the little darkroom. 

Now Peter, not overly given to romantic gestures despite his reputation, stood in his library and tilted his head slightly, one hand rested on the smooth surface of the nearby table, the other idly rubbing his neck. It was silly, he felt, for a man of forty five to stand like a teenaged fool and watch Harriet sleep, but he had spent five years trying to plead, earn, or charm his way into this position, and he was going to enjoy it. 

He enjoyed looking at Harriet, awake or asleep. She had an angular face with ordinary features, dark brows, sometimes unruly hair; but it was her intelligence which animated her features into beauty, and he was ridiculously in love with her for that. It really was quite ludicrous.

"Harriet," he said quietly, then moved to touch her shoulder. Lover's words were all fine and good, but -- "Harriet, if you sleep that way much longer you'll give yourself a cramp."

"Romance is dead," she answered, sleepily.

"Would you rather I quoted poetry and left you to take a cramp?" he asked, with a smile.

"This is why I prefer writing. No one ever takes cramps in books," she replied, sitting up and running one hand through her thick hair. He sat back on his heels, waiting for her to wake fully. "Have I slept long?"

"A little over an hour, I think," he replied. "It's time for tea." 

"Ah! Civilisation."

"Were you having barbarous dreams?"

"No, but -- oh dear," she said suddenly, glancing down and discovering her disintegrated book. "My book!"

"Fallen like Jericho," he said solemnly, his nimble fingers beginning to gather up the sheets as she knelt near him to retrieve the rest of the book where it had fallen. "In pieces and irreparable."

"I had hoped this one would survive one more reading," she said sadly, balancing the bound part on her knee and smoothing the cover. "I'll have to go out tomorrow and see about another copy."

Peter examined one of the pages. " _Here, however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in one of those long queues of which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the Maltese._ Poe?"

Harriet handed him the rest of the book and he neatly shuffled the loose pages, enclosing them between the title page and front cover, which depicted a rather more lurid image of an orangotan, beating his chest over a nubile young woman, than was strictly necessary. 

"I know I'm going to read it to pieces so I never bother to buy one new," she said. 

"A masterwork of the popular illustrator's craft," Peter replied, lips quirking slightly. "I didn't know you were fond of Poe."

"I'm not, particularly, except for that story," she said. "But he's nice light reading once you know what's going to happen."

"I would think you'd rather want to escape the gore of horror and mystery in your light reading," he said, giving her the book, bulging front cover and all. "Shall we go in to tea?"

"I do, generally," she said, taking his offered arm as they stood and walking with him towards the dining room. "But it was my comfort reading on gloomy days at Oxford, and Rue Morgue is what gave me the idea to write mysteries."

"Really?"

"Yes, because it was such a dreadfully bad example. I give him some credit for being one of the first mystery writers -- I wish Voltaire got more -- but I thought if Poe could be famous for writing that, I ought to at least be able to make a living at it." She smiled. "We're all terribly arrogant at twenty-two, aren't we?"

"I suspect I was. It's a wonderful sort of arrogance, though; if you hadn't had it, you shouldn't have begun by writing mysteries and ended a famous novelist."

"Hardly famous."

"You haven't ended yet."

She laughed lightly and let him pull out her chair. Bunter appeared with the tea service and a plate of finger sandwiches; one would never know that he had been working in a darkroom in his shirtsleeves not half an hour before. Tea was poured and served, milk and sugar administered as necessary, and sandwiches chosen with, in Peter's case, oddly charming fussiness. 

"I've been meaning to speak to you about something, actually," Peter said, blowing on his tea to cool it. "I suppose you've considered the fact that when we do marry, both our lives will suffer considerable change?"

Harriet smiled. "Is that your polite way of saying it isn't going to be easy, Peter?"

"Am I being unduly pompous?"

"A little. It's all right."

Peter frowned. "There will have to be adjustments made."

"I had thought about it, some," she said. He looked vaguely relieved. "I guess you mean Bunter, don't you?"

His relief faded into bewilderment. "Bunter?"

"Yes, well, him and the rest of the servants. I know I'm not used to being around so many servants, but I'm sure between you and your mother I can gather how to act -- "

"Good lord, I hadn't thought of that at all," he blurted. "I only meant we're going to have to combine our libraries."

She stared at him. Then she burst out laughing.

"You mean I've been lying awake nights wondering whether I'm supposed to be able to tell Bunter what to do and you've been lying awake nights wondering what we shall do with two different editions of Shakespeare's plays?" she asked, gleefully. 

"Well, it seemed to me like a problem," he muttered. 

"No, by all means," she answered, still amused. "Do you foresee it being a difficult issue, combining libraries? I suppose we could have separate ones, considering we're likely to move somewhere that's twice the size we need."

"I don't think I'd like that," he said. "If you prefer, of course, but I'd rather we share one."

"I don't mind at all."

"I have rather a lot of them, you know," he said, apologetically. 

"Yes, you're somewhat well-known for it," she teased. "I have quite a few myself, though I doubt my library competes with yours."

"And there's parts of the collection you ought to..." he looked, suddenly, rather oddly uncomfortable. "That is to say, Harriet, I really do think some of the books had better not come as a surprise to you."

"That sounds intriguingly mysterious," she answered. 

"May I show you?"

"By all means," she said, rising from the table with him and following him back into the library as Bunter appeared to clear away the tea things. 

He led her to the ladder, an old, solid, wide-stepped antique on rails -- it was really only a ladder by traditional naming, as it had more in common with a very lightly built set of stairs. At his gesture she climbed up onto it, and then had to grip suddenly as he pushed it away from the track-end, towards the centre of the room. 

"Peter!"

"Just a short ride, dearest!" he called up, smiling. "Never fear, I'll be up shortly!"

"You could have moved the ladder first!"

It slid to a stop just before a corner of the room, and he was up the first few steps before she could come down. In half a moment he was there, a step down from her, his chin level with her shoulder. She was enveloped in the not-unpleasant scent of aftershave (and a hint of darkroom chemicals) as he reached around her to grip the ladder's railing. 

"Mustn't fall," he said in her ear, and she smiled. "When I was...younger," he continued, more seriously, "I had a particular lady friend."

"Oh?" she asked, aware she was blushing. 

"Yes. Without going into particulars, let me say that while she was not fond of books, she understood my fondness for them, and as a parting gift she gave me a volume..."

His other arm, reaching around her other shoulder, pulled a slim, brown-leather-bound book off the shelf, balancing it handily as it fell open on his palm. It took Harriet a few second to register what was on the page.

"I suppose we now know what she was fond of," she murmured. The entire page was taken up with a colour engraving, highly detailed and explicit, of a young man and woman engaging in a physical act which was really only rendered unusual by the particular positioning of their limbs. "It's not so unusual, though," she added.

"No, not taken in and of itself. The artwork, regardless of subject, is a feat of skill. It's a translation of an Indian work, quite...delicately done."

"Delicate?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow, and was amused to see, with her head half-turned, that he was flushed, too. 

"To continue with the narrative," he said hastily, closing the book and replacing it, "My uncle Paul -- yclept Pandarus for a very good reason -- found it and purchased a second..."

"Oh dear."

"Quite." His hand found another volume, and laid this one open on the ladder step. She could feel the heat in his face increasing. This picture, smaller and surrounded by text, was of a woman enjoying the solitary company of a mirror and -- 

"What is that?" she asked, anthropological interest overcoming a sense of mild surreality.

"Having, in a moment of like curiousity, examined it under magnification, I am still not quite able to say," he replied distantly. "Educated guesses have been made by several young men and women of my acquaintance who have either stumbled across it or been shown -- "

"That's all right," she said hastily. "Still, it's not likely I would have -- "

She paused, then, her eyes travelling across the shelf he'd removed the books from. Few, if any, had titles; those that did had names that were, in part, recognisable to her. One had "SODOM" boldly stamped in scarlet down its spine, which had been mentioned at Oxford in hushed tones in 17th-century Literature courses. Another looked -- yes, as her hands carefully took it down -- it was a 19th-century binding of Rowlandson's prints. 

She knew Rowlandson's work, but not these particular images. They were filthy and odd, but somehow hilarious as well. "How much of this is...devoted to the carnal?" she asked, amused, as she replaced the folio on the shelf. She had never seen Peter quite so discomfited. 

"Uncle Pandarus gave me three or four volumes before spreading the word amongst certain French and Italian booksellers," he said. "The first time one of them contacted me I was, uncharacteristically, somewhat scandalised -- a gentleman's private affairs, after all..."

"Not very private in some of these books," she observed. He coughed. 

"They are beautiful examples of the bookbinder's art," he said properly. "And as interesting as incunabulae in their own way. I found myself collecting them without quite meaning to. I've never -- " he chuckled a little. "I've never put most of them to any practical use..."

"I don't think it would even be possible with this one," she said, holding one up for him to see better. She turned the page to discover a rather less ridiculous pose, and she heard him inhale even as she herself did. 

One of his hands had moved at some point to rest spread-fingered on her hip, steadying her. "You aren't particularly offended, then?" he asked. "Not shocked or dismayed?"

"Surprised," she replied, breathless. "I wouldn't say dismayed. They do remind me of something..."

"Yes?"

"As long as we're being literately honest with each other," she continued, ignoring his breath drifting across the back of her neck, his fingers pulling her hair to one side. "I should probably tell you..."

"Tell me?" he inquired, lifting his head.

"You didn't need to stop," she said gently, and he laughed against her skin. "When I was younger, before I'd been properly published, a friend of Sylvia read one of my short stories in an obscure magazine. He ran a small publishing house in a terrible part of town."

"Dime paperbacks?" he asked, the hand that had been securing her hip now drifting across her stomach. 

"Of a sort," she replied, and felt him pause. "I published three or four books under a pen-name. Henriette de Vere. I was -- " she stopped for breath. Peter really was remarkably warm. " -- very good at it, though I found it a little tiresome."

"Oh?"

"Within the business they're known as mature novels."

"Mature," he repeated, his tone mildly querying.

"The more common word might be erotic," she replied. "It paid the bills."

"I have no doubt," he answered huskily. "I'm sure you were quite good at it, Harriet."

"Perhaps we should return to solid ground," she said softly. 

When they were standing at the foot of the ladder again she straightened her collar slightly, brushing her hair back with her fingers, and he smoothed his shirt. 

"I'd prefer not to sell them, if you don't mind," he said, as casually as if they'd been discussing some paintings that might clash with a new set of curtains. 

"I don't see why you should," she agreed. "As you said, they are interesting in their own right. It's funny, in a way."

"How so?"

"You wouldn't be the first man to collect such things," she said, and his eyebrows drew together a little, the ghost of Phillip Boyes passing momentarily between them. "Yours are all first editions, though. Works of art. Not just on their own, but...to you."

"Of a sort," he said, amiably. "If you really do wish, I'll build you your own library, but I hope that's not what you want."

She couldn't help glancing back at the table on the other side of the library, where her tattered copy of Poe's short stories lay. He followed her gaze. 

"Books aren't always art, to me," she said. "Some are, and yours are beautiful, Peter, but aren't you afraid someday a first edition is going to end up like that?"

"No," he said simply. "There are books we keep, books that we read but handle with care because they are...physical objects in which we keep history. And there are books we read to pieces because they...aren't. Because they're -- "

" -- tools," she finished, and he nodded.

"You understand that as very few people do, Harriet." He gave an odd, hesitant half-shrug. "I trust you with my books."

"Oh, Peter -- "

"And," he added, hastily, "you've given me a new quest. I thought I owned all of Harriet Vane's books, but I see now that I am a mere amateur collector."

"Oh, dear," she sighed, sitting down on a nearby couch. "You don't mean to start collecting erotic novels?"

"No, merely to augment my previous collection," he answered, seating himself next to her. "Our collection."

"Our collection," she said, feeling suddenly and unaccountably happy. From the look on his face, it was probably contagious. "With those books on a very high shelf."

"Reachable only by ladder," he said gravely.

Bunter, passing in the hall outside the library, heard cheerful voices on the other side of the door and deduced that the revelation had, as he suspected it would, gone very well indeed.


End file.
